The Origin of Asteroids, Meteoroids, and Trans-Neptunian Objects

SUMMARY: The fountains of the great deep launched rocks as well as muddy water. As rocks moved farther from Earth, Earth’s gravity became less significant to them, and the gravity of nearby rocks became increasingly significant. Consequently, many rocks, assisted by their mutual gravity and surrounding clouds of water vapor that produced aerobraking, merged to become asteroids. Isolated rocks in space are meteoroids. Drag forces caused by water vapor and thrust forces produced by the radiometer effect concentrated most smaller asteroids in what is now the asteroid belt. Larger asteroids were acted on longer by more powerful forces which pushed them out beyond Neptune. All the so-called “mavericks of the solar system” (asteroids, meteoroids, comets, and trans-Neptunian objects) resulted from the explosive events at the beginning of the flood.

Asteroids, also called minor planets, are rocky bodies orbiting the Sun. Ninety percent of them have orbits between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, a region called the asteroid belt. The largest asteroid, Ceres, is almost 600 miles in diameter and has about one-third the volume of all other asteroids combined. Orbital information is available for some 625,000 asteroids.3 Some that cross Earth’s orbit might do great damage if they ever collided with Earth.

Textbooks give two explanations for the origin of asteroids: (1) they are the remains of an exploded planet, and (2) a planet failed to evolve completely. Experts recognize the problems with each explanation and are puzzled. The hydroplate theory offers a simple and complete—but quite different—solution that also answers other questions.

Meteorites, Meteors, and Meteoroids

In space, drifting rocks smaller than an asteroid but larger than a molecule are called “meteoroids.” They are renamed “meteors” as they travel through Earth’s atmosphere, and “meteorites” if they hit the ground.

Exploded-Planet Explanation. Smaller asteroids are more numerous than larger asteroids, a pattern typical of fragmented bodies. Seeing this pattern led to the early belief that asteroids are the remains of an exploded planet. Later, scientists realized that all asteroids combined would not form one small planet.4 Besides, too much energy is needed to explode and scatter even the smallest planet. [See Item 21 on page 319.]

Failed-Planet Explanation. The most popular explanation today for asteroids is that they are bodies that did not merge to become a planet. Never explained is how, in nearly empty space, matter merged to become these rocky bodies in the first place,5 why rocky bodies started to form a planet but stopped,6 or why it happened primarily between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Also, because only vague explanations have been given for how planets formed, any claim to understand how one planet failed to form lacks credibility. [See Items 43–46 on pages 29–31.] Orbiting rocks do not merge to become planets or asteroids unless special conditions are present, which the hydroplate theory provides. [See page 309 and Endnote 18 on page 325.] Today, collisions fragment and scatter asteroids, just the opposite of this “failed-planet explanation.” During the 4,600,000,000 years evolutionists say asteroids have existed, asteroids would have had so many collisions that they should be much more fragmented than they are today.7

Hydroplate Explanation. The fountains of the great deep launched rocks and water from Earth.8 Water droplets launched into space partially evaporated and quickly froze. Large rocks had large gravitational spheres of influence which grew as the rocks traveled away from Earth. The largest rocks became “seeds” around which ice particles, smaller rocks, and gas molecules collected gravitationally. Aerobraking by that gas, collapsed all that mass around those “seed rocks,” forming asteroids. [See page 302.]

The size distribution of asteroids shows that at least part of a planet fragmented, but no known energy source is available to explode and disperse an entire Earth-size planet. [See item on page 319.]However, the eruption of so much supercritical water (explained on page 123) from the subterranean chambers could have launched a small percent of the Earth. Astronomers have tried to describe the exploded planet, not realizing they were standing on the remaining 97 ±1% of it—too close to see it.

As flood waters escaped from the subterranean chambers, pillars were crushed, because they were forced to carry more and more of the weight of the overlying crust. Also, the almost 60-mile-high walls of the rupture were unstable, because rock is not strong enough to support a cliff more than 5 miles high. As lower portions of the walls crumbled, blocks—some a staggering 200 meters in diameter—were swept up and launched by the jetting fountains. [See Figure 178.] Unsupported rock in the top 5 miles then fragmented. The smaller the rock, the faster it accelerated and the farther it went, just as a rapidly flowing stream carries smaller dirt particles faster and farther.

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Figure 178: Rapidly Spinning Asteroids. Clumps of rocks in space, held together only by their weak mutual gravity, will fly apart if they spin faster than ten times a day. Asteroids larger than 200 meters across never spin faster than ten times a day, so those bodies may be clusters of loose rocks. Asteroids smaller than 200 meters often spin hundreds of times a day. Therefore, they are solid rocks.12

How could solid rocks drifting in space have formed? Obviously, they didn’t form from merged dust or pebble-size grains. Had they done so, impacts by other particles would have scattered the merged, but weakly-held particles. Consequently, these bodies must be composed of fragments of a much larger body, such as a planet.

But that raises another question. If part of a planet fragmented, or if an entire planet exploded, how could the fragments gravitationally escape? They would have to be accelerated to that planet’s escape velocity. As has already been explained in many ways, Earth’s subcrustal ocean burst forth as the fountains of the great deep and launched those very large rocks.

The velocities in the fountains of the great deep were large enough to accelerate 200-meter-diameter rocks up to and beyond 7 miles per second—Earth’s escape velocity. To accelerate the rocks upward, the jetting fountains had to flow faster than the rocks. As explained in the comet chapter, that high-velocity flow reached speeds of 32 miles per second, so each rock, including the largest blocks, were rounded as they were tumbled and eroded. [See predictions 39 and 40.]

PREDICTION 38: Asteroids are rock piles, often with internal ice acting as a weak glue.9 Large rocks that began the capture process are near the centers of asteroids and comets.

Four years after this prediction was published in 2001 (In the Beginning, 7th edition, page 220), measurements of the largest asteroid, Ceres, found that it does indeed have a dense, rocky core and a mantle primarily of water-ice.10

On 23 January 2014, it was announced that two jets of water vapor were discovered escaping from Ceres at a combined rate of 13 pounds per second.

PREDICTION 39: Most of the rocks (pebble-size and larger) comprising asteroids and comets will be found to be rounded to some degree. (This rounding occurred as the rocks tumbled and were eroded in the powerful fountains of the great deep.)

The European Space Administration announced on 18 December 2014 that very large, rounded boulders—1 to 3 meters in diameter—are stacked “layer upon layer” “all over” Comet 67P. [See Figure 179 on page 340.] They believe that “these spherules, jokingly called dinosaur eggs, could be the fundamental building blocks that clumped together to form” comets.11

Figure 179: “Dinosaur Eggs.” These photographs, taken by the Rosetta spacecraft, show two portions of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. Top: Layer upon layer of rounded boulders (nicknamed “Dinosaur Eggs” or “Goosebumps”) are exposed in the walls of craters “all over the comet.”11 These spheres, 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter, sometimes fall out of vertical cliffs and collect at the base of the cliffs without crumbling. Therefore, the spheres are hard, solid rocks, not compacted dust or pebbles. In the bottom picture (at the black cross), you are seeing a cliff on a small part of the comet. Notice the spherical impressions made by spheres that fell out of the cliff. (Credits: ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA)

At the beginning of the flood, the 46,000-mile-long rupture that wrapped around the Earth formed two cliffs, each 60-miles high. Rock at the base of the cliffs, no longer compressed on all sides, crumbled, because the weight of the overlying rock exceeded granite’s crushing strength. That, in turn, removed support for the overlying rock at the top of the cliffs, so it collapsed, and the rupture’s width steadily grew. That debris was then swept up and out by the escaping subterranean water—the fountains of the great deep, which had speeds of up to 32 miles per second. The launched rocks—those smaller than 650 feet (200 meters) in diameter—were tumbled, eroded, and roundedas they accelerated upward and exceeded Earth’s escape velocity of 7 miles per second. Later, gravity and aerobraking (primarily with water vapor) gently merged those rounded rocks, along with water and dirt, into comets and asteroids.

Scientists at the European Space Agency (ESA) admit that they do not know how these spheres formed.18 Comet researchers and others will continue to be perplexed until they understand the power of the fountains of the great deep. Of course, that requires understanding the flood—especially the source of the water and the indescribable amount of energy that was released. You will see how that energy was produced in the next chapter, “The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity.” You will also see why one must first understand the origin of Earth’s radioactivity before considering the Earth’s age. Earth’s radioactivity was a consequence of the flood and has nothing to do with the age of the Earth. [See "Why Do We Have Radioactivity on Earth?" on page 121.]

Those who refuse to consider the global flood, can use another scientific approach. Instead of reasoning from cause to effect, as we have done, they could reason from effect back to its likely cause. In other words, they could look carefully at these pictures and ask what must have happened to explain their puzzling details. First, what rounded those huge rocks? Fast flowing rivers tumble and round rocks, but that takes many years, even for the fastest rivers. There are no rivers on comets, and the rounded rocks on comet 67P are 10 feet in diameter, not little cobbles or river rocks you can hold in your hand. So, we need something flowing very fast. Besides, any liquid on a comet would immediately flash into vapor or freeze. The only flow in the near vacuum of space that could round rocks would be a hypervelocity gas or plasma. Second, what formed so many rocks of similar size before they were rounded? Solid rocks that big don’t assemble from smaller particles, because an impact by another small particle would scatter the particles that had already merged; impacts in space are usually at high velocities. Therefore, something much larger (such as part of a moon or planet) may have been crushed before the rocks were rounded, since crushing produces somewhat uniform fragments. Then, the erosion and rounding process produces great uniformity, because the larger rocks, slower to accelerate and tumble, are eroded more by the hypervelocity fountains. When two very strange things happen at about the same time, such as (1) a hypervelocity flow that accelerates and rounds gigantic rocks, and (2) the crushing of part of a moon or planet, usually they are connected.

Question 1: Why did some clumps of rocks and ice in space become asteroids and others become comets?

Imagine living in a part of the world where heavy frost settled each night, but the Sun shone daily. After many decades, would the countryside be buried in hundreds of feet of frost?

The answer depends on several things besides the obvious need for a large source of water. If dark rocks initially covered the ground, the Sun would heat them during the

PREDICTION 40: Asteroids spinning faster than ten rotations per day will be found to be single, well-rounded rocks.

day, so frost settling on them during the night would evaporate. However, if the sunlight was dim or the frost was thick (so it reflected more sunlight during the day), little frost would evaporate. More frost would accumulate each night.

Now imagine living on a newly formed asteroid. Its spin would give you day-night cycles. Asteroids do not have enough gravity to hold an atmosphere for long. With little atmosphere for the Sun to warm, day temperatures at the asteroid’s surface would rise rapidly. At night, the day’s heat would quickly radiate, unimpeded, into outer space.

As the fountains of the great deep launched rocks and water droplets, evaporation in space dispersed an “ocean” of water molecules and other gases into the inner solar system. Gas molecules that struck the cold side of your spinning asteroid would become frost.13 Sunlight would usually be dim on rocks in larger, more elongated orbits. Therefore, little frost would evaporate during the day, and the frost’s thickness would increase. Your “world” would become a comet. However, if your “world” orbited relatively near the Sun, its rays would evaporate each night’s frost, so your “world” would remain an asteroid.

In general, heavier rocks could not be launched with as much velocity as smaller particles (dirt, water droplets, and smaller rocks). The heavier rocks merged to become asteroids, while the smaller particles, primarily water, merged to become comets, which usually have larger orbits. No “sharp line” separates asteroids and comets. In fact, some comets are also asteroids and some asteroids are also comets.19

It should not be surprising that asteroids and comets have so many similarities, because both formed by similar processes and from rocks and water launched during the flood by the fountains of the great deep.

Question 2: Wasn’t asteroid Eros found to be primarily a large, solid rock?

A pile of dry sand here on Earth cannot maintain a slope greater than about 30 degrees. If it were steeper, the sand grains would roll downhill. Likewise, a pile of dry pebbles or rocks on an asteroid cannot have a slope exceeding about 30 degrees.20 However, 4% of Eros’ surface exceeds this slope, so some scientists concluded that much of Eros must be a large, solid rock. This conclusion overlooks the possibility that ice is present between some rocks and acts as a weak glue—as stated in Prediction 38 above. Ice in asteroids would also explain their low density. Figure 178 gives another reason why asteroids are probably flying rock piles.

Question 3: Objects launched from Earth should travel in elliptical, cometlike orbits. How could rocky bodies launched from Earth become concentrated in almost circular orbits between Mars and Jupiter?

Gases, such as water vapor and its components,22 were abundant in the inner solar system for years after the flood. Hot gas molecules striking each asteroid’s hot side were repelled with great force. This jetting action was like air rapidly escaping from a balloon, applying a thrust in a direction opposite to the escaping gas.23 Cold molecules striking each asteroid’s cold side produced less jetting. This type of thrusting, which I call the radiometer effect, was efficiently powered by solar energy and spiraled asteroids outward, away from the Sun, concentrating them between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. [See Figures 180 and 181.]

Figure 180: Thrust and Drag Acted on Asteroids. (Sun, asteroid (large black circle), gas molecules (small blue circles), and orbit are not to scale. The fountains of the great deep launched rocks and muddy water from Earth. The larger rocks, assisted by water vapor and other gases within the spheres of influence of these rocks, captured other rocks and ice particles. Those growing bodies that were primarily rocks became asteroids.

The Sun heats an asteroid’s near side, while the far side radiates its heat into cold outer space. Therefore, large temperature differences exist on opposite sides of each rocky, orbiting body. The darker the body14 and the slower it spins, the greater that temperature difference. (For example, temperatures on the sunny side of our Moon reach a searing 240Â°F, while on the dark side, temperatures can drop to a frigid -270Â°F.) Also, gas molecules between the Sun and asteroid, especially those coming from very near the Sun, are hotter and faster than those on the far side of an asteroid. Hot gas molecules hitting the hot side of an asteroid bounce off with much higher energy and momentum than cold gas molecules bouncing off the cold side. Those impacts slowly expanded asteroid orbits until too little gas remained in the inner solar system to provide much thrust. The closer an asteroid was to the Sun, the greater the outward thrust. Gas molecules, concentrated near Earth’s orbit for years after the flood, created a drag on asteroids. My computer simulations show that this gas could slowly move asteroids from many random orbits into the asteroid belt.15 Thrust primarily expanded the orbits. Drag circularized orbits and reduced their angles of inclination.

Figure 181: The Radiometer Effect. This well-known novelty, called a radiometer, demonstrates the unusual thrust that pushed asteroids into their present orbits. Sunlight warms the dark side of each vane more than the light side. A partial vacuum exists inside the bulb, so gas molecules travel relatively long distances before striking other molecules. On average, gas molecules bounce off the hotter, black side with greater velocity and momentum than off the colder, white side. This turns the vanes away from the dark side.16

The black side also radiates heat faster when it is warmer than its surroundings. This can be demonstrated by briefly placing the radiometer in a freezer. There, the black side cools faster, making the white side warmer than the black, so the vanes turn away from the white side. In summary, the black side gains heat faster when in a hot environment and loses heat faster when in a cold environment. Movement is always away from the warmer side.

The physics of the radiometer effect was not correctly understood for 50 years following Sir William Crookes’ demonstration of the effect in 1873. Even the famous James Clerk Maxwell failed to understand the effect when he reviewed and approved Crookes’ paper for publication. Osborne Reynolds (of Reynolds-number fame) and Albert Einstein correctly explained key aspects of the effect in 1876 and 1924, respectively.16

The thrust on the radiometer acts primarily on the vane’s hot edges, not the vane’s relatively large area. The swarms of tiny rocks and ice orbiting the Sun during and after the flood had an astronomical number of hot edges, so the total thrust on each swarm could be much greater than on a regular radiometer.17

Each asteroid began as a swarm of particles (rocks, ice, and gas molecules) orbiting within a large sphere of influence—much like a swarm of bees hovering around a beehive. The swarm’s volume was quite large, so its spin was much slower than it would be once aerobraking collapsed the swarm, thereby forming an asteroid. The slow spin produced extreme temperature differences between the hot and cold sides. The cold side would have been so cold that water molecules striking it would tend to stick as frost, thereby adding “fuel” to the developing asteroid. When the swarm rotated 180Â°, that frost evaporated, adding pressure, and therefore thrust, to the hot side. This cycle (freezing followed by evaporating and thrusting) was probably repeated thousands of times, especially in larger swarms.

Because the swarm’s volume was large, the radiometer pressure acted over a large area and produced a large thrust. The swarm’s large thrust and low density caused the swarm to rapidly accelerate—much as a feather placed in a steady breeze. Also, the Sun’s gravity 93,000,000 miles from the Sun (the Earth-Sun distance) is 1,600 times weaker than Earth’s gravity here on Earth.24 So, pushing a swarm of rocks and debris farther from the Sun was surprisingly easy, because there is almost no resistance in outer space.

Question 5: Why are 4% of meteorites almost entirely iron and nickel? Also, why do meteorites rarely contain quartz, which constitutes about 27% of granite’s volume?

Pillarlike structures formed in the subterranean chamber when the thicker, denser portions of the crust originally settled onto the chamber floor. [Pages 473–479 describe pillars and how, why, when, and where pillars formed.] Twice daily, during the centuries before the flood, tides in the subterranean water stretched and compressed these pillars. This powerful heating process steadily raised pillar and subterranean water temperatures, dissolved quartz, and made pillars porous (spongelike). Figure 182 explains why these temperatures exceeded 1,300Â°F, enough to do all this and allow iron and nickel to settle downward and concentrate in the pillar tips.25 Gravitational settling also concentrated iron and nickel in the Earth’s core after the flood began. [See "Melting the Inner Earth"on pages 617–620.]

Evolutionists have difficulty explaining iron-nickel meteorites. First, everyone recognizes that a powerful heating mechanism must first melt some of the parent body from which the iron-nickel meteorites came, so iron and nickel can sink and be concentrated. How this could have occurred in extremely cold asteroids drifting in outer space has defied explanation.26 Second, the concentrated iron and nickel, which evolutionists visualize in the core of a large asteroid, must then be excavated and blasted into space. The evidence shows this has not happened.27

Figure 182: Hot Meteorites. Most iron-nickel meteorites display WidmanstÃ¤tten patterns. That is, if an iron-nickel meteorite is cut and its face is polished and then etched with acid, the surface has the strange crisscross pattern shown above. This shows that temperatures throughout those meteorites exceeded 1,300Â°F.21 Why were so many meteoroids, drifting in cold space, at one time so uniformly hot?

Heating during an impact would be so brief that thermal conduction (a very slow process) could not produce the extremely uniform WidmanstÃ¤tten patterns, nor would a blowtorch. The brief heating a meteor experiences in passing through the atmosphere is barely felt more than a fraction of an inch beneath the surface. Such iron meteorites had to have been “soaked” in an environment that was at least 1,300Â°F for a very long time before it entered cold outer space. If radioactive decay generated the heat, certain daughter products should be present, but are not. Question 5 explains how these high temperatures were probably reached.

Question 6: Aren’t meteoroids chips off asteroids?

This commonly-taught idea is based on an error in logic. Asteroids and meteoroids have some similarities, but that does not mean that one came from the other. Maybe a common event produced both asteroids and meteoroids.

Also, four major discoveries suggest that meteoroids came not from asteroids, but from Earth.

1. By 1975, the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft traveled out through the asteroid belt. NASA expected that the particle detection experiments on board would find 10 times more micrometeoroids in the belt than are present near Earth’s orbit.28 Surprisingly, the number of micrometeoroids diminished as the asteroid belt was approached,29 showing that micrometeoroids are not coming from asteroids but from nearer the Earth’s orbit. [See Figure 190 on page 351.]

Two Interpretations

With a transmission electron microscope, Japanese scientist Kazushige Tomeoka identified several major events in the life of one meteorite, which initially was part of a much larger parent body orbiting the Sun. The parent body had many thin cracks, through which mineral-rich water cycled. Extremely thin mineral layers were deposited on the walls of these cracks. These deposits, sometimes hundreds of layers thick, contained calcium, magnesium, carbonates, and other chemicals. Mild thermal metamorphism in this rock shows that temperatures increased before it experienced some final cracks and was blasted into space.31

Hydroplate Interpretation. Earth was the parent body of all meteorites, most of which are pillar fragments. [Pages 473–479 describes pillars and how, why, when, and where pillars formed.] In the centuries before the flood, tides in the subterranean water compressed and stretched these pillars twice a day. This tidal pumping heated and cracked pillars. Just as water circulates within a submerged sponge that is squeezed and stretched, tidal pumping circulated mineral-laden water within cracks in pillars. When the flood began, the fountains of the great deep launched pillar fragments, into space; they became meteoroids. ["The Origin of Limestone"chapter on pages 257–262 explains the presence of calcium, magnesium, and carbonates in the water.] In summary, water did it.

Tomeoka’s (and Most Evolutionists’) Interpretation. Impacts on an asteroid cracked the rock that was to become this meteorite. Ice was deposited on the asteroid. Impacts melted the ice, allowing liquid water to circulate through the cracks and deposit hundreds of layers of magnesium, calcium, and carbonate bearing minerals. A final impact blasted rocks from this asteroid into space. In summary, impacts did it.

2. A faint glow of light, called zodiacal light, extends from the orbit of Venus out to the asteroid belt. The light is reflected sunlight bouncing off dust-size particles. This lens-shaped swarm of particles orbits the Sun, near Earth’s orbital plane. On dark, moonless nights, zodiacal light can be seen best in the spring in the western sky after sunset and in the fall in the eastern sky before sunrise. Debris chipped off asteroids would have a wide range of sizes and would not be as uniform and fine as the particles reflecting the zodiacal light. The fine dust particles expelled by the fountains of the great deep would lie near Earth's orbital plane, provide the faint uniform glow, and better explain zodiacal light.

3. Many meteorites have remanent magnetism, so they must have come from a larger magnetized body. Eros, the only asteroid on which a spacecraft has landed and taken magnetic measurements, has no net magnetic field. If this is true of other asteroids as well, meteorites probably did not come from asteroids.30 If asteroids are flying rock piles, as it now appears, any magnetic fields in the randomly oriented rocks would be largely self-canceling, so the asteroid would have no net magnetic field. Therefore, instead of coming from asteroids, meteorites likely came from a magnetized body, such as a planet. Because Earth’s magnetic field is 2,000 times greater than that of all other rocky planets combined, meteorites probably came from Earth.

Some believe that meteorites were chipped off asteroids millions of years ago. Actually, remanent magnetism decays, so meteorites must have recently broken away from their parent magnetized body.

PREDICTION 41: Most rocks comprising asteroids will be found to be magnetized.

4. Meteorites can be divided into three classes: 95% are stones, 4% are irons, and 1% are in an intermediate class, stoney irons—more correctly called pallasites. (Pallasites were discovered in 1794 by German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas.) Stones are rich in the chemical element silicon and the mineral olivine.32 Irons are an iron-nickel mixture that was initially molten. Pallasites formed from a molten iron-nickel mixture injected into or mixed with fragments, primarily of olivine. We know the iron and nickel were molten, because smelting is required to extract and concentrate iron and nickel from the ores or rocks containing those elements.

Once in a dense, liquid state, the iron-nickel drained downward along cracks. Later, it cooled and solidified as one unit—separately encasing millions of olivine crystals. (Figure 183 explains this in more detail.)

Figure 183: Pallasites. Think how surprised you would be if you saw water frozen in a tank with thousands of ping-pong balls evenly distributed throughout the ice. That would be strange enough, but when sunlight shines through those ping-pong balls, they glow. Pallasites are just as surprising.

This 22-pound pallasite meteorite is a thin slice of the larger, 925-pound Fukang meteorite that fell in 2000 in the Gobi Desert in China's Xinjiang Province. Sunlight from behind, shining through the olivine crystals, makes them glow—like Sun shining through a stained-glass window.

Each translucent piece of gem-quality olivine is suspended in a gray, iron-nickel metal that was molten when the olivine grains were encased. This presents a problem. Olivine’s density is about 3.7 grams/cubic centimeter, while the density of iron-nickel is about 7.8 grams/cubic centimeter—more than twice as dense. Why didn’t the low-density olivine float to the top of the dense iron-nickel liquid?

Obviously, no gravity was acting to separate these particles as the molten iron-nickel froze. Zero gravity means the meteorite, containing molten iron and nickel, was drifting weightlessly in outer space as the freezing occurred. The less dense olivine was scattered within the dense molten iron-nickel, because the meteorite was tumbling as it was launched. Similar events have previously been described in this book:

Early during the flood, fluttering hydroplates and pounding pillars crushed rock and slid rock fragments over each other. Friction at those extreme pressures melted the sliding surfaces and injected the denser iron-nickel liquid into cracks below. Many large rocks were swept up by the escaping (extremely hot) supercritical water and launched into outer space by the fountains of the great deep. Then, as the fountains expanded upward, the temperature of the flow dropped to nearly absolute zero (-460Â°F)—as explained in “Rocket Science” on page 596. The molten iron-nickel (mixed with what are now gem-quality olivine crystals) quickly froze.32

Why is the olivine gem-quality and, therefore, so bright? The suspended crystals merged (grew in size) as the iron-nickel solidified in the weightless environment of space—precisely the conditions in which crystals can grow most uniformly and become gem-quality. Thus, light can shine through each of the olivine crystals with minimal distortion, as shown above.

What provided the heat that melted so much iron and nickel? It is commonly taught that Earth evolved as rocks fell from outer space onto an asteroid-size body that steadily grew over millions of years into today’s Earth. Those impacts supposedly heated the growing Earth so much it became molten, allowing iron and nickel to gravitationally settle to form Earth’s core. [The many reasons this is not true are explained in "Forming the Core" on page 164.] This common error led to the view that meteorites also impacted and melted large asteroids, so they too formed liquid cores. That is doubtful, because powerful impacts could shatter asteroids (which are just flying rock piles). Also, asteroids are so much smaller than Earth that they rarely receive impacts and they lose heat faster than Earth. (Smaller bodies have a higher surface-to-volume ratio, so they radiate their heat faster into outer space.) This is why asteroids, since their formation, have been cold, and never molten.

Earth’s mantle is rich in silicon and olivine, and Earth’s core is iron-nickel rich, so pallasites were thought to have come from some core-mantle boundary. Earth was never considered as the parent body for any meteorites, let alone pallasites, because few could have imagined, in their wildest dreams, an energy source that could have launched large rocks at speeds greater than Earth’s escape velocity: 7.0 miles per second (11.2 km/sec).33 Besides, wouldn’t iron meteorites have had to come from Earth’s iron-nickel outer core, 1,800–3,200 miles below Earth’s surface? Therefore, everyone reasoned—incorrectly, it turns out—that meteorites came from much smaller bodies. Asteroids, with a (hoped for) iron-nickel core, seemed to fit the bill, but even then, excavating and launching iron meteorites from an asteroid large enough to possibly have a solid, iron-nickel core was still difficult to imagine.27

But pallasites present five other problems:

Since iron-nickel liquid is twice as dense as olivine, how could olivine fragments be scattered throughout molten iron and nickel? All the low-density olivine should float to the top. [See Figure 183.]

The boundary between a silicon-rich mantle and molten iron-nickel core should be extremely thin, even if such a boundary existed in an asteroid. The number of pallasites that could come from that thin boundary would be far less than the 1:4 ratio of pallasites to iron meteorites.

Tests on eight pallasites showed that the molten iron-nickel mixtures cooled at such diverse rates that they could not have originated at a core-mantle boundary, even in an asteroid.34 Cooling rates at such a boundary would have been quite uniform. However, cooling rates inside rocks of various sizes that were launched into extremely cold space by the fountains of the great deep would differ considerably.

Some pallasites contain remanent magnetism, showing that the molten metal cooled in the presence of various magnetic fields, some of which were up to twice as strong as Earth’s field today.35 (There is no direct evidence that any asteroid ever had a magnetic field, although many believe that story.) In the next chapter, you will see that the fluttering hydroplates and pounding pillars produced a steady stream of powerful electrical surges within the crust and pillars. Magnetic fields accompanied each of the billions of electrical surges.

Probably no asteroid is big enough to have ever had a molten core, let alone a magnetic field. Yes, 90% of all meteorites show evidence of at least some melting, but that is because they came from the hot subterranean chamber, not from an asteroid in supercold space. Many hypotheses have been proposed to try to solve this long-standing problem: “What heated the asteroids?”36 No clean answer exists, because the heating occurred before the asteroids formed.37

The hydroplate theory solves all five problems.

Figure 184: Shatter Cones. When a large, crater-forming meteorite strikes the Earth, a shock wave radiates outward from the impact point. The passing shock wave breaks the rock surrounding the crater into meteorite-size fragments having distinctive patterns called shatter cones. (Until shatter cones were associated with impact craters by Robert S. Dietz in 1969, impact craters were often difficult to identify.)

If large impacts on asteroids launched asteroid fragments toward Earth as meteorites, a few meteorites should have shatter cone patterns. None have ever been reported. Therefore, meteorites are probably not derived from asteroids. Likewise, impacts have not launched meteorites from Mars. [For other reasons, see page 356.]

Twenty-four additional observations either (1) support the proposed explanation that meteoroids and the material that formed asteroids came from Earth, or (2) are inconsistent with current theories on the origin of asteroids and meteoroids.

1. For decades, astronomers have said that asteroids are rocky bodies and comets are dirty snowballs.38 Why then do at least some asteroids have water-ice on and inside them?39 [See Prediction 40 and Figure 350 on page 350.] If ice or water vapor came out from inside an asteroid, how did the water get inside? Certainly, not from outside, because almost all asteroids are too close to the Sun for water (liquid or ice) to remain?40 [See "Earth: The Water Planet" on page 30.]

Answer: Some water and complex organic matter that were formerly on the Earth are now in asteroids and comets. [See “Rosetta Mission” on pages 306–307.] No “sharp line” separates asteroids and comets.

The hydroplate theory provides the details. As the flood began, muddy water and some organic material were launched from Earth. In the cold vacuum of space, about half of that water quickly evaporated and the remainder froze. Later, gravity (as explained beginning on page 309) formed asteroids and comets from some of that material. Since the flood, almost all ice on asteroid surfaces has sublimated (vaporized), leaving behind a crust of dirt that protects the deeper ice within. If internal ice is suddenly exposed by an impact or by fracturing, water vapor will briefly vent and form a temporary atmosphere for the asteroid. Eventually, that water vapor will either escape or become frost on the asteroid’s surface. Water-ice has been discovered on asteroids Themis and Cybele.39

PREDICTION 42: Water-ice on asteroids will be rich in deuterium.

PREDICTION 43: A deep, penetrating impact on a large asteroid, such as Ceres, will release huge volumes of water vapor. (This prediction has now been confirmed.9 See Figure 185.)

Figure 185: Bright Spots on Ceres. In March 2015, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft began orbiting Ceres, the largest of all asteroids (almost 600 miles in diameter). In the next few months, scientists discovered 130 bright Spots on Ceres which, after months of debate, were identified as water ice, usually found in the bottom of craters. When the largest and brightest spot (shown above in a 2.5 mile deep crater) is warmed by sunlight, its ice (containing salts that lower the melting temperature) sublimates into a low cloud of water vapor which reflects even more sunlight. The cloud appears and disappears in step with the day-night cycle. Most water vapor remains below the high crater rim, although a few kilograms of this crater’s water escape from Ceres each second. Therefore, this crater is young.45

How did ice and its dissolved salts collect in the bottom of craters? Within a few years (or perhaps centuries) after the flood, aerobraking collapsed each swarm of rocks, ice, and dirt, releasing heat and forming the solar system’s asteroids and comets. When Ceres, the most massive asteroid formed, such great heat was released that considerable internal ice melted, causing liquid water to rise and collect under the frozen surface of Ceres. Later impacts on Ceres produced craters that exposed the ice below or collected water that melted from the impact, drained into the crater, and froze. (Water ice is 25% of Ceres by weight.)

2. Minerals in meteorites are remarkably similar to those in the Earth’s crust.41 Some meteorites contain very dense elements, such as nickel and iron. Those heavy elements seem compatible only with the dense, rocky planets: Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Earth—Earth being the densest.

A few asteroid densities have been calculated. They are generally low, ranging from 1.2 to 3.3 gm/cm3. The higher densities match those of the Earth’s crust. The lower densities imply the presence of empty space between loosely held rocks or something light, such as water-ice.42

PREDICTION 44: Rocks in asteroids are typical of the Earth’s crust. Expensive efforts to mine asteroids43 to recover strategic or precious metals will be a waste of money.

3. Most meteorites44 contain metamorphosed minerals, showing that they reached extremely high temperatures and pressures, despite a supposed lifetime in the “deep freeze” and weightlessness of outer space.

Asteroids have also experienced extreme heating.37 Radioactive decay within such small bodies could not have produced the necessary heating, because too much heat would have escaped from their surfaces. Stranger still, liquid water altered some meteorites46 while they and their parent bodies were heated—sometimes multiple times.47

Impacts in space are often proposed to explain this mysterious heating throughout an asteroid or meteorite. However, an impact—similar to throwing a baseball into a bean-bag chair—would raise the temperature only for an instant near the point of impact. Before gravel-size fragments from an impact could become uniformly hot, they would radiate their heat into outer space.48

For centuries before the flood, tidal pumping generated considerable heat within pillars in the subterranean water chamber. [See Question 5 on page 342.] As the flood began, the powerful fountains of the deep launched rock fragments into space—fragments of hot, crushed pillars and rocks from the crumbling walls of the ruptured crust. Those rocks became meteoroids and asteroids.

4. Tiny, ultrahard diamonds have been found in a meteorite, showing that at one time both the temperature and pressure within that rock were extremely high.49 Asteroid impacts in supercold space (almost absolute zero) might produce the pressures needed, but would not produce the necessary temperatures. Meteorites entering Earth’s atmosphere are heated but only on their surface, and their tumbling action would probably not produce the necessary pressure. Pounding pillars in the subterranean chamber would experience both the temperatures and pressures needed to form these superhard diamonds.

5. Because the material that later merged to become asteroids came from Earth, asteroids typically spin in the same direction as Earth—counterclockwise, as seen from the North. However, collisions have undoubtedly randomized the spins of many smaller asteroids in the last few thousand years.50

6. Some asteroids have captured one or more moons. [See Figure 177.] Sometimes the “moon” and asteroid are similar in size. Impacts would not create equal-size fragments that could capture each other.51 The only conceivable way for this to happen is if a potential moon enters an asteroid’s expanding sphere of influence while traveling about the same speed and direction as the asteroid. If even a thin gas surrounds the asteroid, the moon will be drawn closer to the asteroid, preventing the moon from being stripped away later. An “exploded planet” would disperse relatively little gas. The “failed planet explanation” meets none of the requirements. The hydroplate theory satisfies all requirements.

Also, tidal effects, described on pages 592–595, limit the lifetime of the moons of asteroids to about 100,000 years.52 This fact and the problems in capturing a moon caused evolutionist astronomers to scoff at early reports that some asteroids have moons.

Figure 186: Comet Hartley 2. On 4 November 2010, the Deep Impact spacecraft passed within 435 miles of Comet Hartley 2 and took this photograph. Hartley 2 has a peanut shape, as does asteroid Itokawa (shown in Figure 187) and some other asteroids and comet nuclei, because they all formed by the same special mechanism.

Once launched into space by the fountains of the great deep, smaller debris gravitationally merged with large rocks traveling nearby with similar velocities and directions. The relative velocities of merging pairs were very small, because they were launched about the same time and place and with similar directions and speeds. Smaller bodies that came within the spheres of influence of larger rocks would briefly orbit the larger bodies. Then, if the gas in those spheres of influence (gas also launched into the inner solar system) removed enough orbital energy, the larger body would capture the smaller body. Once capture had occurred, aerobraking would decay the orbits and, over weeks to years, the two would gently merge.

Eventually, the larger rocks gravitationally attracted enough matter (swarms of ice, dust, gases,and organic material) that they became large globs. The larger a glob became, the larger its sphere of influence, so the glob could pull in even more material. Finally, if two large globs gently merged, they became peanut-shaped comets or asteroids. [See Figures186 and 187.]

If merged bodies have spent much of their lives orbiting close to the Sun, their frozen surface volatiles would have completely evaporated; we call them asteroids. However, if the merged bodies spent little time near the Sun, their volatiles would still be venting today when they passed near the Sun, and we call them comets. This is why asteroids and comets have so many similarities, why a few are catalogued as both comet and asteroid, and why asteroids impacted by space debris will suddenly start venting their frozen internal volatiles.

What was the source of the organic material? Probably it came from something living, although that is not absolutely necessary. Further space missions will clarify this. Meanwhile, one would be wise to bet that the organics came from life on the preflood Earth, not that organics in space seeded life on Earth. The latter is absurd, because life is so complex, and organisms exposed to space radiations for millions of years would be dead.

Surprisingly, Hartley 2 is expelling more carbon dioxide (CO2) than water vapor. Undoubtedly, other comets and asteroids once contained frozen CO2 (dry ice).Because Hartley 2, a small comet, is still sublimating, it must be very young. To understand all of this, see "Why Do Comets have so Much Carbon Dioxide?" on page 306.

Figure 187: Asteroid Itokawa (E-toe-KA-wah). The fountains expelled dirt, rocks, and considerable water from Earth. About half of that water quickly evaporated into the vacuum of space, freezing the remainder. Each evaporated gas molecule became an orbiting body in the solar system. Later, as explained on pages 337–345, asteroids formed—many shaped like peanuts.78

Gas molecules captured by asteroids or released by icy asteroids became their temporary atmospheres. Asteroids with thick atmospheres sometimes captured smaller asteroids as moons. If an atmosphere remained long enough, those moons would lose altitude andgently merge gravitationally with their asteroids, forming peanut-shaped asteroids. If an atmosphere dissipates before merging, a moon remains, as shown in Figure 177 on page 336. We see merging (called aerobraking) when a satellite or spacecraft reenters Earth’s atmosphere, slowly loses altitude, and falls to (merges with) Earth. Without an atmosphere, merging in space becomes almost impossible.

Itokawa formed from two smaller asteroids with different densities (1,750 kg/m3 and 2,850 kg/m3) that merged.79 Donald Yeomans, a mission scientist and member of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, admitted, “It’s a major mystery how two objects each the size of skyscrapers could collide without blowing each other to smithereens. This is especially puzzling in a region of the solar system where gravitational forces would normally involve collision speeds of 2 km/sec [4,500 miles per hour].”80 The mystery is solved when one understands the gentle role that water (and the gases produced) played in the origin of comets and asteroids.

Comet 67P, first described in the “Rosetta Mission” on page 306, also has a peanut shape, but is described as looking like a “rubber duckie”: two rounded bodies that merged—the smaller duck’s head sitting midway on its potato-shaped body. For over a year scientists were mystified for the reasons Donald Yeomans explained above. Therefore, they proposed an explanation that most people would consider crazy: maybe something in the vacuum of space eroded only the narrow neck region where the two lobes joined. Although the scientists finally saw enough evidence that showed the two bodies merged,81 they are still mystified for Yeomans-like reasons, but all of you know why the merging by aerobraking was gentle. [See p. 307.]

As explained in Prediction 39 on page 338, notice on Itokawa’s surface the many rounded boulders, some 150 feet in diameter. An exploded planet or impacts on asteroids would produce angular rocks. Japan’s Hayabusa spacecraft traveled alongside asteroid Itokawa for two months in 2005. The spacecraft landed on asteroid Itokawa, scooped up 1534 tiny rocks (up to 0.18 millimeters in diameter) and returned them to Earth in 2010. The wide range of minerals in those rocks were typical of Earth’s most common minerals, but their chemical elements were quite different from the solar system’s most common chemical elements. Analyses of Itokawa’s minerals show that at some time in the distant past, they reached temperatures of up to 1472Â°F, which would have been typical of the rocks in the subterranean chambers. Average temperatures on the asteroid itself are 1,900Â°F colder! 82

7. Meteorites contain different isotopes of the chemical element molybdenum, each isotope having a slightly different atomic weight. If, as evolutionists teach, a swirling cloud of gas and dust mixed for millions of years and produced the Sun, its planets, and meteorites, then each meteorite should have about the same combination of these molybdenum isotopes. Because this is not the case,53 meteorites did not come from a swirling dust cloud or any source that mixed for millions of years.

(The next chapter, “The Origin of Earth’s Radioactivity,” will explain why different mixes of isotopes are in different meteorites, but for now remember that most meteorites are fragments of crushed pillars and each pillar was subjected to a different isotope-producing environment when the flood began.)

8. The smaller moons of the giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) are captured asteroids. Astronomers generally accept this conclusion, but do not know how these captures could have occurred.54

As explained earlier in this chapter, the radiometer effect, powered by the Sun’s energy, spiraled asteroids outward from Earth’s orbit for decades after the flood. Water vapor tended to collect as thick envelopes (temporary atmospheres) around asteroids and planets, causing aerobraking which allowed massive planets to capture asteroids. Without these temporary atmospheres (or some yet to be explained means for removing orbital energy), capture is nearly impossible.55

Saturn’s 313-mile-wide moon, Enceladus (en-SELL-uh-duhs), is an asteroid, captured by aerobraking, and is therefore in a highly elliptical orbit. [See Figure 188.] Asteroids are icy and weak, so those captured by a giant planet experience strong tides. Tidal pumping at Enceladus slowed its spin, and generated considerable internal heat that melted ice and boiled deep reservoirs of water. Because this capture was quite recent,58 the water jetting from cold Enceladus’ is still a hot plasma. “Dark green organic material”56 is on its surface. The water escaping Enceladus supplies Saturn’s E ring,61 contains salts resembling those in Earth’s ocean waters.57 This loss of internal water has buckled the surface near the geysers as shown in Figure 188.

The farther Enceladus is (on its elliptical orbit) from Saturn, the more Enceladus’ crust is stretched at its south pole and the more water vapor and ice particles are ejected. Tidal stresses widen and narrow the fractures that connect the tiger stripes to the Lake-Superior-size global “ocean” below Enceladus’ crust.58

But some researchers object.62 They say that heat generated by tidal pumping could not “keep a global [subsurface] ocean from freezing,”63 let alone melt ice in the first place. What is overlooked is that tidal pumping and internal heating were greatest immediately after asteroid Enceladus was captured as a moon only about 5,000 years ago. Since then, its spin rate has slowed, and frictional heating has diminished. [To understand tidal heating using an example closer to home, see “Tidal Pumping” on page 123 and pages 609–611.]

9. Saturn’s moon, Dione, has a subsurface, liquid-water, global ocean, heated by tidal pumping and estimated to be under 100 kilometers of water ice.64 Therefore, as explained above, it is also a recently captured asteroid.

Figure 188: Enceladus, One of Saturn’s Moons. (Top) Fountains of salty water (in the form of a hot plasma and micrometer-sized ice crystals) are steadily ejecting from Enceladus’ south pole. The concentration of salts is similar to that in Earth’s oceans.57 Can you guess why? Water that fails to escape Enceladus falls back as snow—similar to water that fell back from the fountains of the great deep onto Earth during the global flood. Also, tidal pumping by Saturn’s gravity produces the great heat that converts Enceladus’ subsurface water-ice into electrically charged plasma jets—just as tidal pumping (from the Sun’s and Moon’s gravity) initiated heating in the preflood subterranean water.This jetting and heating must have begun recently. The fountains on Enceladus also contain “water vapor laced with small amounts of methane as well as simple and complex organic molecules. Surprisingly, the plumes of Enceladus are similar in make-up to many comets.”59 Again, can you guess why?

(Bottom) A close-up photo of Enceladus’ south pole shows what NASA calls “tiger stripes,” where at least 30 jets of water erupt up through 80-mile-long cracks in the ice crust. (Those jets are not visible under the lighting conditions of this picture.) Tidal pumping widen and narrow the cracks58 and cause them to slip laterally, showing that an ocean lies below. As water is expelled from under the south pole, the icy crust wrinkles, like the skin of a dried out, shriveled orange. Most wrinkles are 500–1,000 feet high; some are 1,600 feet high.

10. Mars has two tiny moons, Phobos (FOH-bus), 14 miles in diameter, and Deimos (DEE-mus), 8 miles in diameter. In 2008, a spacecraft passing near Phobos measured its density (1.876 gm/cm3); Phobos contains up to 30% empty space65 or something much lighter than rock, such as water-ice. Asteroids and Phobos have similar low densities. Both moons have similar surface materials as asteroids,66 but different surface materials than Mars. Therefore, Phobos and Deimos probably were not blasted off Mars.67

PREDICTION 45: Mars’ smaller moon, Deimos, also will be found to have a very low density.

Astronomers would normally conclude that both moons are captured asteroids, except for the inconvenient laws of orbital mechanics which show it is virtually impossible to perturb asteroids from circular orbits in the asteroid belt and place them in circular orbits around Mars. Astronomers are perplexed.

However, asteroids did not come from the asteroid belt; they formed from rocks and water (ice) launched from Earth by the powerful fountains of the great deep. Then, the radiometer effect, powered by solar energy, spiraled asteroids out through Mars’ orbit. Water from asteroids and comets impacting Mars gave Mars a temporarily thick atmosphere able to capture asteroids by aerobraking. Similar events account for the almost 160 moons around the giant planets.

Outgassing

In 1988, the Russian spacecraft, Phobos-2, detected outgassing on Mars’ two moons, Phobos and Deimos.68 This is similar to the outgassing on Enceladus (shown in Figure 188) and by black smokers on Earth’s ocean floors. [See Figure 57 on page 127.] Clearly, all this outgassing must have begun recently, not millions of years ago.

This scenario on Mars is largely confirmed by the fact that both of its moons have circular orbits that lie in Mars’ equatorial plane.69 Why? In the years following the flood, Mars’ atmosphere had a very low density but grew temporarily to be thousands of miles thick.70 This facilitated asteroid capture and transferred enough angular momentum from Mars’ rotation to circularized Phobos and Deimos and align them in Mars’ equatorial plane.

Similar captures of outward spiraling asteroids occurred farther out, placing moons with circular orbits in the equatorial planes of the giant planets.69 Because asteroids did not spiral inward, Venus and Mercury acquired no asteroids as moons.

11. Many asteroids, called active asteroids,71 suddenly develop comet tails, so they are considered both asteroid and comet. The hydroplate theory says that asteroids are weakly joined piles of rocks and ice. If such a pile cracked slightly, perhaps due to an impact by space debris, then internal ice, suddenly exposed to the vacuum of space, would violently vent (sublimate) water vapor and produce a comet tail. The hydroplate theory explains why comets are so similar to asteroids.

Figure 189: Six Tails. “We were literally dumbfounded when we saw [this 1,600-foot-diameter asteroid],” said lead investigator David C. Jewitt, who viewed this asteroid with the Hubble Space Telescope. “It was hard to believe we’re looking at an asteroid.”83 For at least 5 months, it looked like a rotating lawn sprinkler. “Because nothing like this has ever been seen before, astronomers are scratching their heads to find an adequate explanation for its out-of-this-world appearance.”83

Why should we be surprised? The fountains of the great deep launched water, rocks, and dirt. Later, the gravity of each very large rock, drifting weightlessly in space, pulled in smaller nearby rocks, water-ice, and dirt in the large rock’s sphere of influence. (Aerobraking by all the water vapor then accomplished the merging.) Therefore, asteroids are flying rock piles held together by gravity and ice acting as a weak glue.

An external impact or shift within an asteroid would open hairline cracks exposing some of its internal ice to the vacuum of space. The ice would begin to generate water vapor (sublimate). At the base of such cracks deep inside the asteroid, pressures would suddenly increase and resemble a jet aircraft’s combustion chamber, except an asteroid’s jets would be hundreds of tons of water vapor and entrained dust, not burning aviation fuel.

Jewitt and other astronomers recognized that internal ice would explain what their eyes were clearly telling them, but how could water get inside an asteroid? In the vacuum of space, water (liquid or ice) closer to the Sun than 5 AU vaporizes and is blown out of the solar system by solar wind.40 This asteroid is only 2.2 AU from the Sun. Besides, how could ice in asteroids stick around for billions of years. It should have escaped by now. Jewitt mistakenly concludes:

[The asteroid] is an unlikely carrier of water ice, and sublimation is unlikely to account for the observed activity ... While some [asteroids] are suspected to contain water ice whose sublimation is responsible for the expulsion of dust, others [asteroids] are impact-produced while, for a majority, the origin [of the ice] is unknown.84

Yes, about half of every water droplet in the fountains flashed into steam, but that evaporative cooling quickly froze the remaining liquid. When the ice crystals, vapor, rock, and dust mixture in a large rock’s sphere of influence eventually merged to form an asteroid, the ice was already inside. All of this began during the flood, only about 5,000 years ago. Problem solved.

This asteroid is in the asteroid belt. Comets, on the other hand, have elongated orbits and come in much closer to the Sun. As a comet heats up near its perihelion, it develops many jets. [See Figure 165 on page 300.] Because comets vent near the Sun, a strong solar wind acts on a comet’s jets and pushes them away from the Sun as a unit—forming a comet’s tail.

12. A few comets have nearly circular orbits within the asteroid belt. Their tails lengthen as they approach perihelion and recede as they approach aphelion. If comets formed beyond Neptune, it is highly improbable that they could end up in nearly circular orbits in the asteroid belt.72 So, these comets almost certainly did not form in the outer solar system. The hydroplate theory explains how comets (icy rock piles) recently entered the asteroid belt.

13. If asteroids passing near Earth came from the asteroid belt, too many of them have circular orbits,73 and diameters less than 50 meters.74 However, we would expect this if the rocks that formed asteroids were launched from Earth.

14. Computer simulations, both forward and backward in time, show that asteroids traveling near Earth have a maximum expected lifetime of only about a million years. They “quickly” collide with the Sun.75 This raises doubts that all asteroids began 4,600,000,000 years ago as evolutionists claim—living 4,600 times longer than the expected lifetime of near-Earth asteroids.

15. Earth has one big moon and several tiny moons—up to 650 feet in diameter.76 The easiest explanation for the small moons is that they were launched from Earth with barely enough velocity to escape Earth’s gravity. (To understand why the largest of these small moons is about 650 feet in diameter, see Figure 178.)

16. Asteroids 3753 Cruithne, 2010 SO16, 2002 AA29, and a few others are traveling companions of Earth.77 They delicately oscillate, in a horseshoe pattern, around two points that lie 60Â° (as viewed from the Sun) forward and 60Â° behind the Earth but on Earth’s nearly circular orbit. These points, predicted by Lagrange in 1764 are called Lagrange points. They are stable places where an object would not move relative to the planet if the object could once occupy either point going at zero velocity relative to the planet. But how could a slowly moving object ever reach, or get near, either point? Most likely, it barely escaped from Earth.

Also, Asteroid 3753 could not have been in its present orbit for long, because it is so easy for a passing gravitational body to perturb it out of its barely stable niche. Time permitting, Venus will pass near this asteroid 8,000 years from now and may dislodge it.85

17. Each planet has two Lagrange points on its nearly circular orbit. The first, called L4, lies 60Â° (as seen from the Sun) in the direction of the planet’s motion. The second, called L5, lies 60Â° behind the planet. [See Figure 190.].]

Visualize planets and asteroids as large and small marbles rolling in orbitlike paths around the Sun on a large frictionless table. At each Lagrange point is a bowl-shaped depression that moves along with each planet. Because there is no friction, small marbles (asteroids) that roll down into a bowl normally pick up enough speed to roll back out. However, if a chance gravitational encounter slowed one marble after it entered a bowl, it might not exit the bowl. Marbles trapped in a bowl would normally stay 60Â° ahead of or behind their planet, gently rolling around near the bottom of their moving bowl.

One might think an asteroid is just as likely to get trapped in Jupiter’s leading bowl as its trailing bowl—a 50–50 chance, as with the flip of a coin. Surprisingly, 1068 asteroids are in Jupiter’s leading (L4) bowl, but only 681 are in the trailing bowl.86 This shouldn’t happen in a trillion trials if an asteroid is just as likely to get trapped at Jupiter’s L4 as L5. What concentrated so many asteroids near the L4 Lagrange point?

According to the hydroplate theory, asteroids formed near Earth’s orbit. Then, the radiometer effect spiraled them outward, toward the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Some spiraled through Jupiter’s circular orbit and passed near both Jupiter’s L4 and L5. Asteroids that entered the “L5 bowl” received a forward gravitational tug from Jupiter that tended to pull them out of that bowl, while those that entered the “L4 bowl” received a backward gravitational tug that tended to keep them in the “L4 bowl.” The excess number of asteroids near Jupiter’s L4 is what we would expect based on the hydroplate theory.

Figure 190: Asteroid Belt and Jupiter’s L4 and L5. The size of the Sun, planets, and especially asteroids are magnified, but their relative positions are accurate. About 90% of the 732,884 catalogued asteroids lie between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, a doughnut-shaped region called the asteroid belt. A few small asteroids cross Earth’s orbit.

Jupiter’s Lagrange points, L4 and L5, lie 60Â° ahead and 60Â° behind Jupiter, respectively. They move about the Sun at the same velocity as Jupiter, as if they were fixed at the corners of the two equilateral triangles shown. Items 16 and 17 explain why so many asteroids—called Trojan asteroids—have settled near L4 and L5, and why significantly more oscillate around L4 than L5.

18. NASA is planning to launch two 450 million dollar (U.S.) space missions, one of which will examine two of Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids in 2030. Why? Because NASA thinks they are “oddballs.”87 One of the “oddball” Trojans, named “Psyche,” is an iron and nickel asteroid. NASA scientists think that billions of years ago Jupiter and its Trojan asteroids condensed from the same swirling dust cloud, so why are Psyche and Jupiter (a gas planet) so different? Those scientists should (1) learn the origin of asteroids, (2) understand why asteroids spiraled outward, allowing many to settle into two of Jupiter’s Lagrange points (L4 and L5), and (3) learn how iron and nickel collected in the base of earth’s preflood pillars before they were smashed and the fragments launched into space by the fountains of the great deep. Of course Psyche and Jupiter are different.

In 2032, the second mission will examine two of Jupiter’s Trojans that are orbiting each other. That also puzzles NASA’s scientists, because only one slight gravitational perturbation over millions of years would separate the delicately orbiting pair, especially with so many other perturbing asteroids nearby. What a waste of taxpayer’s money, since these observations (and hundreds of others) are explained or predicted by the hydroplate theory.

19. Without the hydroplate theory, one has difficulty imagining situations in which an asteroid would (a) settle into any of Jupiter’s Lagrange points (let alone one of Jupiter’s symmetric Lagrange points), (b) capture a moon, or (c) have a circular orbit, along with its moon, about their common center of mass. If all three happened to an asteroid, astronomers would be shocked; no astronomer would have predicted that it could happen to a comet. Nevertheless, an “asteroid” discovered earlier, named 617 Patroclus, satisfies (a)–(c). Patroclus and its moon, Menoetius, have such low densities that they would float in water; therefore, both are probably comets88—dirty, fluffy snowballs. Paragraphs 6, 11, 12, and 17 (above) explain why these observations make perfect sense with the hydroplate theory.

20. Asteroid 2015BZ509 travels very near Jupiter’s entire orbit—but backwards (retrograde, clockwise as viewed from the north star)! This presents astronomers with three problems,89 all solved by the hydroplate theory.

a. If 2015BZ509 has been there for millions of years, how did it avoid colliding with the more than a thousand asteroids traveling prograde near Jupiter’s orbit?

b. Why, after all this time, has Jupiter’s gigantic gravity not flung 2015BZ509 far from its current orbit?

Answers for a and b: Asteroids are not millions of year old. They formed only a few thousand years ago—as a result of the flood.

c. How could an asteroid end up in a retrograde orbit?

Answer: Some of the debris launched by the fountains of the great deep (that later merged to become asteroids) orbited the Sun in the retrograde direction.

21. As explained in "Shallow Meteorites"on page 41, meteorites are almost always found surprisingly near Earth’s surface. The one known exception is in southern Sweden, where 40 meteorites and thousands of grain-size fragments of one particular type of meteorite have been found at different depths in a few limestone quarries. The standard explanation is that all these meteorites somehow struck this same small area over a 1–2-million-year period about 480 million years ago.90

A more likely explanation is that a meteorite launched during the flood did not have quite enough velocity to escape Earth’s gravity. The meteorite fragmented into many pieces as it slammed back into the atmosphere. The pieces embedded themselves at slightly different depths in mushy, recently-deposited limestone layers in what is now southern Sweden.

22. Light spectra (detailed color patterns, much like a long bar code) from so many comets and asteroids show that complex organic compounds and kerogen, a coal-tar residue91—and even amino acids—were in those bodies when they formed.92 Life as we know it could not survive in such a cold, radiation-filled region of space, but common organic matter launched from Earth could have been preserved.

23. Many asteroids are reddish and have light characteristics showing the presence of iron.93 On Earth, reddish rocks almost always imply iron oxidized (rusted) by oxygen gas. If iron on asteroids is oxidized, the oxygen probably came from dissociated water molecules.

Mars, often called the red planet, derives its red color from oxidized iron. Again, oxygen in the water vapor launched from Earth during the flood probably accounts for Mars’ red color.

Mars’ topsoil is richer in iron and magnesium than Martian rocks beneath the surface. The dusty surface of Mars also contains carbonates, such as limestone.107 Because meteorites and Earth’s subterranean water contained considerable iron, magnesium, and carbonates, it appears that Mars was heavily bombarded by meteorites and water launched from Earth’s subterranean chamber. [See “The Origin of Limestone” on pages 257–262.]

Those who believe that meteorites came from asteroids have wondered why meteorites do not have the red color of most asteroids.114 The answer is twofold: (a) as explained on page 343, meteorites did not come from asteroids but both came from Earth, and (b) asteroids have their red color because they contain water that oxidizes the iron in the asteroid’s rocks.

24. Mars has relatively little gravity, travels very near the asteroid belt, and has a thin atmosphere. However, Mars should not have any atmosphere if asteroids have been pummeling it for 4.5 billion of years. Evidently, asteroids have not been around for 4.5 billion years.115

Meteorites Return Home

Figure 191: Salt of the Earth. On 22 March 1998, this 2 3/4 pound meteorite landed 40 feet from boys playing basketball in Monahans, Texas. While the rock was still warm, police were called. Hours later, NASA scientists cracked the meteorite open in a clean-room laboratory, eliminating any possibility of contamination. Inside were salt (NaCl) crystals 0.1 inch (3 mm) in diameter and liquid water!94 Some salt crystals are shown in the blue circle, highly magnified and in true color. Bubble (B) is inside a liquid, which itself is inside a salt crystal. Eleven quivering bubbles were found in about 40 fluid pockets. Shown in the green circle is another bubble (V) inside a liquid (L). The horizontal black bar represents 0.005 mm, about 1/25 the diameter of a human hair.

NASA scientists who investigated this meteorite believe it came from an asteroid, but that is highly unlikely. Asteroids, having little gravity and being in the vacuum of space, cannot sustain liquid water, which is required to form salt crystals. (Earth is the only planet, indeed the only body in the solar system, that can sustain liquid water on its surface.) Nor could surface water (gas, liquid, or solid) on asteroids withstand high-velocity impacts. Even more perplexing for the evolutionist: What is the salt’s origin? 95

Figure 42 on page 110 illustrates the origin of meteoroids. Dust-sized meteoroids often come from comets. Most larger meteoroids are rock fragments that never merged into a comet or asteroid.

Much evidence supports Earth as the origin of meteorites.

Minerals and isotopes in meteorites are remarkably similar to those on Earth.41

A few meteorites show that “salt-rich fluids similar to terrestrial brines” flowed through their veins.103

Some meteorites have about twice the heavy hydrogen concentration as Earth’s water today.104 As explained in the preceding chapter and in Endnote 89 on page 430, this heavy hydrogen came from the subterranean chambers. About 86% of all meteorites contain chondrules, which are best explained by the hydroplate theory. [See “Chondrules” on page 414.]

Seventy-eight types of living bacteria have been found in two meteorites after extreme precautions were taken to avoid contamination.105 Bacteria need liquid water to live, grow, and reproduce. Obviously, liquid water does not exist inside meteoroids whose temperatures in outer space are near absolute zero (- 460Â°F). Therefore, the bacteria must have been living in the presence of liquid water before being launched into space. Once in space, they quickly froze and became dormant. Had bacteria originated in outer space, what would they have eaten?

The Tagish Lake Meteorite

Evolutionists understand how hard it is for most people to believe life evolved on Earth, and the media know how excited the public is with the idea of life evolving on other planets. This may explain why evolutionists and the media are increasingly claiming that life came from outer space.

The universe is aswarm with the stuff of biology—and it could be seeding life everywhere ... and meteors that landed on Earth have been found to contain amino acids, nucleobases—which help to form DNA and RNA—and even sugars. (Time Magazine, “Aliens Among Us,” 22 October 2012, pp. 44, 46.)

Such statements overlook obvious facts and a simple explanation. Let’s look at just one piece of scientific evidence. One of the most studied meteorite falls in modern times occurred at 4:43 PM on 18 January 2000 at Tagish (TA-jis) Lake in northwestern British Columbia, Canada. A meteoroid, estimated to be 112,000 pounds and 13 feet in diameter, struck Earth’s upper atmosphere. About 97% of the rock burned up in the atmosphere; most of the rest fell onto the frozen lake, greatly reducing the chance of contamination. More than 500 black fragments (totaling 22 pounds) were soon recovered on the ice and later analyzed by an international team of twenty scientists.108

Organic Matter. Almost 3% (by weight) of these pristine meteorites were complex organic molecules, obviously produced by living organisms: amino acids and long strings of carbon-based compounds. How can this be explained?

Rocks and organic matter from plants and animals were pulverized and launched by the fountains of the great deep. Some merged to become meteoroids (as well as comets and asteroids). This team of scientists, on the other hand, say they don’t know how it all happened, but speculate that the organic matter already existed between the stars before the solar system and meteorites formed.109

Same Organic Material in Comet. Organic material in the Tagish Lake Meteorite was so similar to that found in comet Wild 2 that they probably had a common source.110 Evolutionists believe that common source was the massive dust cloud from which the entire solar system, including comets, formed 4.6 billion years ago. A much simpler, closer-to-home explanation is that the common source was life that was on Earth only about 5,000 years ago.

Organic Transformations. Transformations from one organic form to another occurred within these rocks before they struck Earth’s atmosphere. In the laboratory, hot, high-pressure water can easily produce such transformations, exactly the conditions present during the early days of the flood.

This apparently facile [easily accomplished (in high pressure water)] transformation is unexpected. It is most likely caused by hydrothermal alteration, as is observed in experiments involving hydrous pyrolysis of reaction with water at elevated temperature and pressure ... .111

Evolutionists, admitting that these transformations were unexpected, visualize them occurring on some asteroid, which is ridiculous. Neither high temperatures, high pressures, or liquid water would be present on an asteroid. Some organic molecules were mirror images of each other. Liquid water can produce such transformations.112

Water Soluble Compounds. Scientists discovered that many organic compounds inside the Tagish Lake meteorite had been dissolved in water before the meteorite struck Earth’s atmosphere. How could that be?

Liquid water on Earth did the dissolving and then the rocks and organic material were launched into space. Liquid water and organic matter almost never exist in outer space—let alone get close enough together for the water to slowly dissolve the organic matter.

Neutron Enrichment. These meteorites were rich in hydrogen-2, carbon-13, and nitrogen-15 (instead of the normal hydrogen-1, carbon-12, and nitrogen-14).113 Why? As will be explained in the next chapter, when the flood began, these elements absorbed neutrons from the sea of neutrons generated in the fluttering crust. With no specifics or evidence, evolutionists believe these neutron-heavy isotopes formed in the interstellar medium more than 4.6 billion years ago.

Clays. Small amounts of clays are found in these meteorites. Clays are produced by water acting on rock—either slowly over a long time or violently over a short time. High pressure water escaping violently and hypersonically from the subterranean chamber produced these clays in rocks swept up in the fountains of the great deep.

Although asteroids are hundreds of degrees too cold to sustain liquid water, evolutionists believe that liquid water on asteroids produced the clays over millions of years and, later, impacts on asteroids chipped off the rocks that remarkably traveled to Earth to become meteorites.